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This message Premiere #27: Whims of the Watchman was posted by Assak Malevi receives visitors, as chronicled by... the Hooded Hood on Friday, September 6, 2002 at 11:44.
Premiere #27: Whims of the Watchman
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The Red Watchman sat on his throne of skulls and watched the pile of human fingers mount up. Three days ago he had ordered that the life support systems to the habitation units of the worker classes of Technopolis be shut off until each family had paid tribute to him. The tithe was one severed finger per dwelling. By now the air in the sealed apartments was getting stale, the citizens were getting hungry and thirsty and desperate, and the mountain of severed digits was rising high.
Assak Malevi was amused by how many of the fingers were those of children. It confirmed his world view.
Dr Zalas, head of the Science Council, hovered beside the mad tyrant ruler of Technopolis clutching a comm-pad defensively. “Well?” the Watchman demanded. “I’m in a good mood, Zalas. Don’t spoil it.”
“Nothing but good news, master,” the sweating scientist promised him. “Satellite drones report that Herringcarp Asylum was completely destroyed. Rubble. Our vision-tap on the local science hero ManMan recorded his stabbing of the Hooded Hood. And now he had led Premiere and his local idiots into our deathtrap in the cooling ducts beneath sector 17.”
“The forces of the political units of this backward planet?”
“In disarray, master. Raids by our forces on key strategic targets have cost them significant materiel and have weakened their resolve to resist. Their war leaders are discussing using their primitive nuclear devices against us. That should be amusing. And Bodyhopper is in position, of course.”
“The raid?” Malevi demanded. “The science villain assault before the Hood’s stronghold was annihilated?”
“Also successful, master. We even captured back one of our escaped metahuman science technicians and one of the indigenous science heroines.”
“One?” scowled the Red Watchman. “Initial reports said you had two for my amusement.”
“So we thought, master. One seems to have been… lost in transit. I shall have Dimensionweaver flogged.”
The Watchman snorted. “Yes, I’m sure you’d enjoy lashing her, wouldn’t you Zalas? I have long since noted your preference for experimentation on the prettier female science villains – in the interests of science, of course. And so many of your tests seem to involve them writhing in agony strapped naked to a laboratory bench.” The amusement fell from his face like a mask. “Be careful that I do not let Dimensionweaver strap you to a bench some time, Zalas.” Then his mood shifted again. “So who do we have to play with?”
___________________________________
“Dancer?”
Sarah Shepherdson shifted so she could see her fellow prisoner in the holding cells beneath the White Room. “Yes, Kareen?”
“I’m scared.”
That’s natural, Dancer thought. After all, we’re prisoners of a sadistic psychotic whose hobby is torturing superheroes, and you’ve already seem him have most of the people you know raped and murdered. We’re chained up here in power neutralizers waiting to get dragged out to be the main event in some dissection display. I’m not feeling that confident myself. “Try to be strong,” she advised Windblossom. “I’ve faced this kind of thing once before, in Marrakesh. They took my powers and I was going to be sold at the slave market and it was… the scariest time of my life. But I got out then. We could get out this time.”
“What if we don’t?” Kareen O’Connell was shivering with fright. “I’m n-not a brave person, Dancer.”
Somehow Sarah nerved herself to be the brave one. She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of despair this time. She had to be there for Windblossom. “Sure you are, Kareen. I heard about how you rescued all those wounded people. And you stood up to those science villains. You might not have a combat-type super-power but you have heart and guts. Really.” I just hope I can help you keep them inside your body, Dancer didn’t add.
“Dancer, I know what they’re going to do to us. I’ve seen it before. I don’t think I can…”
The door slid open and four burly science policemen marched in before Dr Zalas. “Good afternoon, ladies,” he smirked. “I trust our accommodation has met your exacting standards?”
“Why do you smell like a dirty diaper?” wondered Dancer, declining to join in the traditional clichéd banter with her captor.
Zalas glared. He was not about to discuss the dietary requirements that the Red Watchman had programmed into his new body. “It’s time for one of you to suffer pain,” he announced. “Volunteers? Nominations?”
Windblossom pursed her lips and shrank against the wall trying not to weep.
Dancer swallowed hard although her mouth was dry. “I’ll go,” she said.
“Splendid,” nodded Zalas. He gestured the guards forward. “Bring the other one then.”
___________________________________
Technovore had never been human. The sentient computer virus had the ability to shift its consciousness into any machine and warp it physically and electronically to its purpose.
It was puzzled by the thin white credit card lying on the corridor before it.
The card was face down, its reverse side smooth and blank. Technovore extended an arm of knotted cord and metal and picked it up.
It was a communications device. Fairly basic by the standards of Technopolis, the comm-card could transmit a carrier signal to a near-Earth-orbit satellite and then to anywhere on the planet. It and the data it concealed were locked behind a local state-of-the-art encryption system requiring a code input and a DNA scan of the user.
Technovore cracked the defenses in just under three seconds. “Now,” it purred in its electronic voice, “let us see what you have to tell us.”
The science villain unpeeled part of its consciousness into the card and across the carrier wave beyond. The satellite was modern for this rather backward Earth but its technology was easy to subvert as well. And from there Technovore could jump the vast distance on the sub-light pulse-beam to somewhere else, somewhere far away…
There. Technovore poured itself into the computer at the other end of the data stream. It was a powerful machine and the virus consciousness had to channel more and more of itself to subordinate it. It took Technovore seven seconds to realize that it had actually leaped to another planet.
On Pluto the continent-sized computer in the Dark Knight’s fortress flickered to life and turned its attention on the little intruder that had been so presumptuous as to invade technology ordained by the Chronicler of Stories.
“Urk!” gasped Technovore.
In Technopolis the Dark Knight melted out of the shadows to grasp the stricken science villain’s physical body in a neck lock. “We need to talk,” the urban legend told it with a grim, mirthless smile.
___________________________________
“Windblossom, isn’t it?” Dr Zalas asked the girl strapped to his operating table. “Technician second class, service number JKY793420039. Class 3 vegetable manipulation, Class 2 plant empathy. You would have been disposed of by much lower-level people than me if you hadn’t jumped into the big times by escaping with Victor Brooke. As it is, you get to be interrogated by the very best.”
“Please, no…”
“You’ll talk without torture? Save yourself by betraying your friends?”
Kareen clamped her mouth shut and shuddered. She was desperate to escape, so terrified she would do almost anything; but not that.
“I hoped not,” Zalas smirked. “Then let us begin. This pipette contains concentrated nitric acid…”
___________________________________
Dancer was thrown at the Red Watchman’s feet in the blood-stained White Room. She did a graceful roll and came up to her feet.
“Sarah. How delightful,” Assak Malevi grinned. “You may all get out,” he told his retainers. “I wish to speak to the lady alone.”
“Who’s Sarah?” asked Dancer, trying to cover her secret identity.
“This isn’t the time for philosophy,” the Red Watchman answered. “My deep-scan telepaths have discovered rather more than just your name, Ms Shepherdson. They have discovered all kinds of interesting things about you.”
“I’m a fascinating person,” Dancer answered. Strangely she felt more nervous alone with the Red Watchman than when she had been surrounded by his sycophants and minions. “You, on the other hand are a mad dog mass murderer who needs centuries of therapy.”
“Like the therapy you gave Premiere?” smirked the Watchman. “Oh yes, my telepaths are very thorough. I know all about your time with dear Victor. I know what scares you, what haunts you, what arouses you. I know where to hurt you and how to break you. And now I know that everything I do to you will hurt my mortal enemy as well.”
“And that still doesn’t make you better than him,” Dancer answered. She couldn’t have fought back better of she’d practiced for a week.
A wave of agony washed over Sarah as the Watchman tweaked her central nervous system, triggering pain reactions in every nerve of her body simultaneously. She toppled to the floor writhing helplessly. Malevi looked at her until he was no longer amused then allowed the torment to stop.
“Gotcha!” grimaced Dancer triumphantly, spitting blood at his feet.
“You, on the other hand, know little about me,” the Red Watchman told her. “To you I’m nothing but a bogeyman, the adversary. So perhaps I should demonstrate some of my… gifts to you. My powers allow me to manipulate matter and energy on an intimate scale. I can suppurate you or skin you, burn you or electrocute you. I can make you love me or hate me. I can change you so that your fondest wish will be to grovel at my feet like a dog. I can break your heart or burst it. So many choices.”
Dancer met his gaze. “But Premiere will still beat you in the end.”
“Perhaps,” agreed the Watchman. Then his eyes lit with an unholy delight. “But once again, it will be too late for the woman he loves…"
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